


I am the Fury in Your Head

by briath



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, aromantic Fero, gloria lake makes a cameo, implausible geography, shoutout to Keith J Carberry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-13 16:47:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briath/pseuds/briath
Summary: (post-WIH)Ephrim dresses, undresses, and dresses himself again. Fero needs some help with those things.(or: a story about finding comfort, company, and hope, in times where all of the above are rare to find)





	I am the Fury in Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my draft for half a year, but it's largely unedited, bc i needed to Get It Out. I might fix some things later.
> 
> I didn't tag any warnings, because if you made it through Winter, this should be okay, but let me know if I there are any I should add (This fic doesn't explicitly describe and violent or traumatic scenes, but it does sort of deal with the fallout thereof).  
> Rated Mature to be safe. 
> 
> Title is from Spanish Sahara by Foals.

Every curl of the fluttering fabric leaves him feeling lighter, like he is shedding his role with it, the sweat still cooling on his skin—he can smell it barely. There, hands shaking, goes the collar, and with it goes the whisper of 'prophet, prophet' that follows him. It flops onto the ground such that it whirls up the snow: Throndir had said it must be packed tight, by now, but the flakes that are falling from the sky seem almost gentle. His Summer Son. Lord of the Coming Spring. 

Ephrim keeps going. Tears off new pieces of garment or armour, indiscriminately, barely watching as they fall down. He hasn't spoken to anyone in two hours. It's not an impressively long time, but it is impressive how it weighs on him. 'I am me and you are mine' echoes in his head, over and over, and over, and over. Until he is left standing in a red tunic and a piece of gauze. 

*

When Throndir knocks on the door and enters without waiting his gaze falls first onto Ephrim's wrapped hand (He takes care not to let anything show on his face), then sweeps down and travels up his leg. Even through the exhaustion, the attention leaves a thrill in Ephrim. It feels good to be acknowledged; that this is one part of his fire he hasn't lost, that something of _him_ remains. He sighs. 

Throndir is fiddling with the strings on his jacket, he can tell. To buy time, he bends down and picks up his coat. Smooths it out, hangs it over a chair. It's useless, an useless act. He wakes screaming from nightmares about tears in that coat no one remembers, so well have they been fixed. He wakes, in the early morning, only half, and then the room is swathed in gold light and he cannot, cannot breathe. His grudge, his fire, is idle compared to Throndir, who has been simmering now for days. It's an easy borrowing, that warmth. Easy, to supplement a god's warmth for—he sighs and straightens back up. Throndir is looking out the window with the polite, mildly-embarassed air of one who has stared far too long. Ephrim feels amused.

“Hey, ranger. Did you want something?” Throndir glances back at him, his cheeks slightly pink, and clears his throat.

“Ah, yes. Ms—Doctor—Gloria Lake told me that Solomon ran into Fero in the forest. He said he was leaving, but, uh. He was just sitting there? I shouldn't be telling you this, but, you're a church type, right! You like to do the good thing? Mrs Lake said people get lost sometimes, and I know I'm the ranger, just, I am so busy here, would you mind checking in on him?” He stares back at Throndir for a minute, face deliberately impassive.

The first thing he feels is amusement: clearly, The Ranger was confused by just what kind of church person he was speaking to. The second thing rests hard in his spine: his church, precipitated on some sort of odd, ontological conflict, a story book repeating itself, all the characters looking the same. Well. He's simplified some of it now, he thinks. 

(The third thing, wound up with all the others, is more complicated. It's in the cold, maybe, the idea that this ranger thinks to tell him what to do. The numbing clarity that he will, but only of his own accord.) Ephrim understands speechlessness, he thinks. Throndir, from the way he is now fiddling again by the door, does less so; he nods, briefly, and can't help but read relief into Throndir's exit. 

Maybe that's his own. Probably not. Though, does he have anything to wear? He doesn't feel particularly in the mood to be stopped by someone right now. He stares at his bed for a moment, contemplative. Then, in a move that feels way too close to an exhale for his liking, he lifts up his coat, turns it around, and hangs it sideways over his shoulder. The armour on the floor reflects his face back to him: he has to look down to make sure he doesn't step on it. He can't recognize himself. It feels apt, and, as Ephrim draws his makeshift coat closer around himself, holding it with one hand, he draws comfort from the visibility of who he is, now, with or without a god to lord his visage over him.

When he steps outside the tent, the cold curves snugly around him like a glove. Most people don't pay him any heed; he doesn't notice Dr. Gloria Lake look at him sideways, then glance away again, smug half-smile on her face. He walks on autopilot. The woods are everywhere, in this place. Fero looks up at him as he approaches, suspicious and tired (he suspects), perched on a tree trunk, with his knees pulled up to his chest like a bird on flight. “Fero,” Ephrim says. Fero continues staring up at him. Ephrim sighs. “Fero,” he says again. He wonders if Fero can see him wavering; that he doesn't know what to do. He wishes for Hadrian, briefly, but the thought disgusts him almost in the instant of its conception, and he pushes the feeling away again. Fero bursts into words as a sudden, great gush of air, a flock of birds. 

Ephrim twists a lock of his hair behind his ear. 

“Did they send you to talk to me?! Did they think I was just going to fold like that?! I am SO TIRED of being told what to do, I KNOW what to do, and all of these assholes keep trying to tell me, and they don't listen to me, and they fuck it all up!! And I'm trying to fix it! Nobody will help me!”

“Fero,” Ephrim says, feeling very tired. 

Fero pushes himself up in his seat, glares at Ephrim's face. “WHAT.” 

“I--.” He breaks off, and sighs. “Okay, yes, they did send me to talk to you, but nobody told me what I was supposed to say, and to be honest, I'm really tired, and I just kind of wanted to take a nap. But Throndir I _suppose_ is some all-important guy, now, and so I came and talked to you.”

Fero has turned towards the extinguished fire now. Ephrim sits down next to him. “Oh.” His voice is quiet and small. 

“And I, uhm—I agree. A lot of the people here are selfish assholes.” With a pang of nausea he remembers himself, so full of ambition, what it was like to see that face mirrored in the eyes of a god he's lived his whole life in the shadow of. He bites down down the laughter. Fero is twisting the stalk of an improbably green dandelion between his fingers. His face is furrowed. Ephrim feels lighter the more he looks. 

“Hey, Fero?”

Fero doesn't look as though he's really listening. “It's not like I asked for this,” he grumbles. Ephrim leans forward on his knees. “Asked for what?” he asks. Fero shakes his head, his face twisting up further. “Gods are dumb,” he says.

Ephrim feels like he might float away. He leans his head back and stares into the bright, bright winter sky. “Yes,” he says. “They often are.”

*

When he looks back down, Fero is staring up at him wide-eyed. “But aren't you supposed to be all about gods?” 

“One god. And times can change.”

Fero's face scrunches up, but he doesn't say anything further. He glances to the side, at the pile of ashes, then back up at Ephrim's face. His fingers are tangled in his lap, like he's trying to arrest his own movement. “I haven't seen you transform in a while,” Ephrim says. He means for it to be a casual question, maybe a gentle, helpful suggestion, but the way Fero freezes makes it clear it came out as neither. 

Ephrim waits for a few minutes, or maybe seconds, or maybe...it's hard to tell. But when Fero still has neither spoken nor moved, he grows impatient. With less gentleness than before, he puts a hand on Fero's shoulder. 

He doesn't know what he was expecting, but Fero turning in on himself until he is half sitting in Ephrim's lap probably wasn't it. Ephrim takes a long, shaky breath, trying to  
force himself to be calm, and quiet. “Fero.” 

Fero makes a sort of quiet huffing noise into the white fur on Ephrim's coat. 

He breathes in again. “Do you know these woods?” A nod. 

“Can you show me some place we can be alone?” Silence. Then, Fero slowly lifts his head out of the folds of Ephrim's tunic, more ruddy than red at this point, gives Ephrim a wary look, and nods slowly. 

He waits. Fero slowly shuffles himself onto his feet, then shakes himself. A couple of leaves flutter to the ground. Ephrim's nose wrinkles almost without his say-so.

Now that they're standing, their dress seems laughably simple. Not only that, they seem deeply underdressed for the weather—fine for Ephrim. But Fero is still wearing nothing except his green shirt and trousers, no coat or even fur collar. His clothes are filthy. Ephrim clears his throat. “Are you cold?” 

Fero has started walking ahead of him, moving lightly through the snow as though it's nothing, but at Ephrim's words, he turns his head slightly and blinks up at him. “No? It's fine, we'll be there soon anyway.” He turns back around and starts walking onwards. Ephrim follows, dragging his feet out of the snow over and over again. Back here, outside the parameters of the camp, it lies thick and loose, and even his long boots are not quite long enough to keep the snow out. 

*

Fero leads him for a long time. 

He is silent for almost all of it; seems to have forgotten Ephrim's presence almost entirely. Ephrim would think he was falling asleep were it not for Fero's reactions: a small, red-speckled bird flies to their right to perch on a leaf with fluttering wings gets him to turn his head while walking. A badger rustles in the undergrowth, and he perks up. Ephrim thinks, a bit bitterly, that he has nothing to distract his mind like that. 

Still, eventually they reach a destination: Fero, still silent, walks right up to the foot of a mountain, and presses his hands against it. For a moment, he blurs into the grey stone, then Ephrim blinks, and Fero is back. He lets his hand drop to his sides, and the mountain cracks open, silently, as though she, too, is afraid to break the spell they seem to be under, like the winter has gotten to her, too. Fero halts in the doorway. He turns sideways, and “come in, summer prince,” gestures for Ephrim to step forward. 

_What's with that tone_ , thinks Ephrim irritatedly, _or that title_ (then, nonsensically, _god, I'm tired_ ), but he takes that step all the same. His right hand curls by his side. It's weird, weird, and he feels more jittery as he steps into the cave. 

He doesn't hear Fero move. So when the greying light snaps into complete darkness, he will forgive himself for jumping, maybe, for the muttered curse “Oh, by Samothes,” and the then quieter: “Fero?”

Fero hums—somewhere by his right shoulder—and grabs his hand. “Come on,” he says again, and tugs forward, until Ephrim has no choice but to follow. 

As they walk, Fero begins to talk, quietly at first, then louder. About Lem King, first and foremost, about the snow. He says little about gods. He says little about the restless twitch in his fingers, the persistent scrapping sound Ephrim thinks to be nail on stone. Nevertheless, Ephrim listens. Speaks, a little bit, himself: stories, mostly, the kind he'd grown up with, but also things Hadrian had done. Some part of him wants to ask about the Archives, but Fero already seems stretched beyond his capacities—and maybe Ephrim is good at listening, certainly exceptional at talking, but perhaps not so good with admitting he went wrong.

(He was. He has learned much from this god business, from Fantasmo--Arrell--but if he has learned anything, he's learned this: He was wrong. But others were, too, and their mistakes weigh heavier than his. They felt themselves too untouchable to listen. So he does. He does listen, and if he hears the echo of Fero's words thrown back from the cave walls as loudly as he hears .. other things, well. He's listening still.)

Fero's steps slow to a halt. Ephrim blinks against the onslaught of sudden silence, then leans forward, brashly. 

"Fero?"

Fero is quiet for a long while. Ephrim, disquietedly, can't see his face, and so can't see anything about him, can't look into his eyes and pour sincerity like it's what he's made of anymore anyway, and so has to wait. It itches at his skin, it doesn't suit him. "FERO," he says, louder, gripping him by one shoulder and turning him around to half-face Ephrim. 

The fight goes out of him with a rush that makes him tremble. Fero is shaking, thick teardrops clinging to quartz. "He left," he says, not looking up. "He left in Nacre too, and everything got fucked up." 

Ephrim sighs inaudibly. Fero goes on talking: "It doesn't make ANY SENSE. We were there together! And he just left! And he forgot about me! He cared more about this stupid pirate he just met and his stupic orc...BULLSHIT than what we were there for! Me and Hella had to do everything by ourselves! And.."

 _Oh,_ Ephrim thinks, _right._ That pirate Lem met in Nacre, and then in Rosemerrow. Fero's confused anger. He feels like he knows, suddenly, what is going on, knows just as suddenly that he will not be able to explain it to Fero in any way that makes sense to him, not right now. Instead he leans forward. Fero is still not looking at him. 

"Fero," he says, gently, "your clothes are dirty." 

It gets Fero to look up, but only to look at him like he said something almost incomprehensible in its absurdity. "So?" 

He pulls a leaf off his tunic and throws it to the ground while staring up into Ephrim's face. Ephrim sighs. Okay. Change of tack, then. "Do you also just think like that? That the only thing I'm good for is rolling in the dirt and turning into some animals?!" Ephrim winces. It's not surprising Fero's got a tight grip, but then he doesn't usually experience that grip first hand. 

"No." 

Fero looks at him suspiciously. Ephrim resists the urge to sigh again. 

"No. I don't. But, Fero...You could take care of yourself better."

Fero doesn't look suspicious anymore, but he just shrugs his shoulders in response. "Why? They would get dirty again. And why should I care what other people think? Other people suck."

Ephrim giggles. 

"It's True." 

"Yeah, no, it is. Where is it we're going, Fero?" 

"Oh!" As if he's just remembered they were going somewhere, Fero begins drawing him down a hallway to the side. At first, Ephrim thinks they're going deeper into the mountain. But as they go on--it becomes easier for him to keep track of time now, minutes passing slowly and steadily--the air becomes warmer. Easier to breathe in. Ephrim relaxes his hand in Fero's. He closes his eyes for just a moment.

"Here we are!" Fero says cheerfully. Ephrim blinks open his eyes, then tries and fails to close them again.

Before them is what he takes for some sort of hot spring, a source, or something like that--Fero has stepped close to the edge and is dipping his foot into the water. Ephrim watches the way the change in temperature makes the muscles in his calf contract. "Come on! What are you waiting for!"

Ephrim guiltily tears his eyes away.

With some measure of regret, he drops his inside-out coat by his feet, looks down at his bandaged hand, and sighs again. Then he puts down the knife, the shield. He looks up. Fero is already in the water, laughing and smiling. Only his eyes peak out. Ephrim tugs at his tunic, then kneels down to untie the straps around his boots. When he gets back up, he catches Fero staring. He stares back. Eventually, Fero looks away, and Ephrim is left to remove his tunic and glide into the water.

"This is a really nice place." The water is warm, and so, by his side, is Fero. He looks so much like a bedraggled house cat, Ephrim has to bite back a laugh every time he looks at him. 

"mmhm. I told you so!" 

The water splashes, but it seems quieter here. Ephrim leans his head back against the rock. 

"Hey, Ephrim?"

"Hm?"

A beat. "Do you think I should be cleaner?" 

Ephrim opens his eyes, gazes at the ceiling.

"No."

A beat. "I mean, good, me neither."

A beat. "Why?"

Ephrim shifts his weight. 

"Lots of people are clean enough. Most of them have got no decent bone in their entire body." He looks at Fero. He is running his hand through the water like it has something to tell him. 

"Hey Ephrim?"

"Hm?"

Brown eyes bore into his.

"Can I kiss you?" 

Ephrim feels like he was offensively unprepared for this question. "What? Why?"

Fero shrugs, not making eye contact. "I dunno. You just seem nicer to me. Or at least like you at least care about pretending to care."

For some reason, this makes sense to him. It's probably because they've been travelling together for so long. 

"Even though I also left you?"

Fero just shrugs again. "Lem's done that more often than you, and I still thought we were friends for ages, even though I was wrong. And you're here still. Not a lot of people are still..trying."

"And," splash splash, "You said gods were bastards."

Ephrim splutters. "No, I did not!"

Fero gazes at him shrewdly. "Yeah, you kind of did. Anyway. Can I?"

Ephrim stares at him in utter bafflement. Slowly, he feels his head start to nod up and down. Fero beams. "Great," he says, leaping forward.

The wall of the basin hurts when his head slams into it by virtue of being completely unprepared for an enthusiastic, above-average halfling launching himself at his face. "Oww," he whines; Fero makes a sound that could probably pass for 'sorry' in some language spoken by a people Ephrim's never met, but his lips are soft on Ephrim's, and a delightful sort of cautious insistence. Ephrim kisses back. He bypasses dragging his hand over Fero's back to curve it around his neck. Fero chokes on a moan, and Ephrim shivers, draws back to take a deeper breath, and dives back in. 

Fero is clawing at his back, but it doesn't bother him, leaves are drifting all around them, but Ephrim doesn't mind. It occurs to him, briefly, and with a painful intensity of knowing, that he's missed devotion--on his terms--even in the short time he's been lacking it. Every prince becomes a king. He laughs, breathlessly, against Fero's neck, then pulls him closer in. 

For Fero, the mountain is safe. It is safer still to hear it ring in his bones, this way, to feel the way Ephrim's touch transforms him, little by little--he feels his inaction become stifling suddenly, rearing up against Ephrim's hold in sudden panic--but Ephrim's immediate hesitation makes him open his eyes, see a frown, and, in increments, relax--he growls a little. Ephrim's mouth is just there, and, to prove he is not weak, not passive, can Do something, he bites at it. It feels rough. And warm. Ephrim huffs. His hand scratches down his scalp. Fero sighs, content.

*  
When they're done, they put their clothes back on, stale and stiff from cold and dirt though they are, and make their way out of the mountain holding hands. They don't speak until the exit has opened up before him. Ephrim clears his throat.

"So where are you gonna go now?"

Fero lets go of his hand, and puts both of his in his pockets. "The Erasure," he says. "I think I can fix this."

Ephrim nods slowly. "Ok. I think I want to keep an eye on Throndir. And Arrell. Just in case we fail."

Fero looks at him again, looks at him so closely Ephrim almost starts to feel uncomfortable, starts to wonder if he's going to contest the 'we', but in the end he just nods slowly.

"Yeah," he says, looking off into the distance. "In case we fail."

Ephrim follows his gaze, and there's a small brown bird sitting on a branch. When it notices them looking, it chitters and flies away. 

**Author's Note:**

> .


End file.
